John D. Podesta

John D. Podesta (aka John David Podesta, J.D.), founder, President and Chief Executive Officer of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, served as Chief of Staff to President William Jefferson Clinton and headed the transition team for President-elect Barack Obama. Podesta is Visiting Professor of Law at the Georgetown University Law Center. He is a government relations and public affairs consultant. 

Overview

 * Trustee, Century Foundation
 * Director, League of Conservation Voters
 * Director, Women's Voices. Women Vote
 * Advisory Board, Truman National Security Project
 * Advisory Board, Res Publica
 * Political Advisor, Roosevelt Institution
 * Member of Coordinating Committeem The Century Foundation Homeland Security Project

John Podesta "is considered one of the Democratic party's sharpest and toughest operatives. Podesta is a 54-year-old marathon runner with an intense, angular face that seems to suggest he is always calculating something you would never be able to grasp. He is also the leader and architect of a new liberal think tank in Washington known as the Center for American Progress. His goal is to build an organization to rethink the very idea of liberalism, a reproduction in mirror image of the conservative think tanks that have dominated the country's political dialogue for a generation."

John Podesta has been criticized for coming out in favor of immediately reorganizing the government based upon the 567-page 9/11 commission report, the same day that it was released.

Tobacco industry documents
During press interviews in January, 2000, then-White House Chief of Staff John Podesta said that the Administration's top priority for the coming year was to enact a prescription drug benefit and inferred that tobacco taxes would be a key revenue offset.

Related Sourcewatch articles

 * C. Boyden Gray
 * Energy Coalition Foundation
 * Energy Future Coaltion (Steering Committee)
 * lobbying firms
 * soft money
 * The Fund for America
 * Timothy E. Wirth

External articles

 * Chris Cillizza and Mark Preston, Clinton Broadens Role, National Republican Senatorial Committee, January 29, 2003.
 * Matt Bai, Notion Building, The New York Times, October 12, 2003.
 * Eric Alterman & Danielle Ivovy, "Blogosphere to Mainstream Media: Get Off the Bush," Center for American Progress, May 8, 2009.


 * Peter Baker, The New Team: John D. Podesta, New York Times, November 5, 2008.
 * John Stauber, How Obama Took Over the Peace Movement, PRWatch.org, March 27, 2009.
 * Jeremy Scahill, Rahm Emanuel's Think Tankers Enforce 'Message Discipline' Among 'Liberals', RebelReports.com, April 9, 2009.

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